Drive Safe & Save‪®‬ 4+

Battery Usage

I enjoy that you’re able to see the specifics as to how they rate your driving & how they show you on the map where certain things happened if you get “dinged” with speeding/hard braking/phone usage, etc.
One problem I’ve noticed, living in an area where some spots can have a lot of deer, if I brake due to a deer running across the road (which you’d think would be the safe option), I end up getting a lower driving score for hard braking & it tells me to keep a safe distance from the car ahead of me.. except it was for a deer, not me following too closely.
Also, not too thrilled that it marks you down for using navigation apps, as I use my phone for gps sometimes. Even to skip songs or have someone else use your phone for you, it marks you down. I know it says the phone usage doesn’t effect the discount, however, it lowers your overall driving score which does effect the discount.
Another issue I’ve ran into now that I have to have my location services on all the time along with Bluetooth, I’ve noticed that my battery is dying so fast!! I used to get away with not even charging my phone at night sometimes because the battery would still be high enough from the previous nights charge & now I’m having to recharge my phone at least twice a day - it’s really kind of inconvenient. If I charge my phone while I drive (suggested by State Farm), then I can’t listen to music, as it uses the same plug in area on my phone.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for the feedback! Our app will use more of your battery than other apps, especially during a trip. The battery usage is similar to navigation apps because we use both GPS and Bluetooth services during the trip. One way to reduce the battery usage is to plug in your phone while you drive.

Ridiculously sensitive

I mean, it does save money, but it’s ridiculously sensitive. And you get penalized for things that are out of your control. Hard braking events do not always mean you were following too close. It could be a kid or dog ran out in the road in front of you. 0 event trips are not that common as it requires driving in such a manner that is frequently dangerous for various reasons. It commonly causes road rage in other drivers around here. If you have to accelerate quickly to merge in to a highway? Event. You should go much slower and get rear ended by a semi instead. Have weird Texas highways where the exit from a 75 mph highway to a 45mph access road is only 20ft? (I’m not joking) Better slow down on that highway a good distance before your exit so you get rear ended by a semi. The basic problem is they’re applying the things they consider to be safe driving habits universally, where in the real world conditions vary greatly and things like taking a long time to accelerate can actually be dangerous.
I live in a location that you have to turn left from a good size road and it requires coming to a stop to let cars pass before you can make the turn. The app reports my braking to come to the stop there as an event every single time I come home. And I’m not slamming on the brakes. I actually take a long time to slow to a stop so as to not get rear ended by the people behind me. Still reports it as an event. Frustrating.

Glitchy and doesn’t make sense

1: The app rated me at 97 yesterday for speed. Today it rated me at 96, even though no speeding incidents occur. 2: i drove to my daughter’s daycare. Parked. Took out my phone to check her in, then got back in my car and drove away. It counted that as “distracted driving” despite my car having been stopped and parked before i got my phone out of my pocket. 3: it doesn’t give you an east shortcut to the incidents, you have to go searching through the trips and tap and wait for each to load to see if it has the corresponding type of incident you want to see. 4: there should be a 4th option of “provide feedback on this trip” to indicate that “i was driving and i used my phone, but it was while i parked, got out, walked around with my phone, then got back in car etc” rather than be shoehorned into either “i was driving” or “i was driving but passenger used my phone”. Neither are correct but i’ll be damned if i get deducted score and subsequent lower discount for distracted driving cuz the app can’t tell i parked the car and got out while using my phone. If i mess up by speeding or brake too hard or corner too hard that’s on me. I take the hit in score and discount cuz that’s honest. Don’t make your app shortcoming fall on my bank account. Contact me for more ideas, State Farm app developers.